>> For argument sakes, finance could be the higher level group and intern could >> be a sub group in a hierarchy. There could be n number of sub groups. We >> could provide access by adding n-1 groups to the policy. We can argue >> whether n<10 or n>50, depending on the answer it would make sense to add >> all groups which needs access or specify deny groups which don't need access
The groups may not fall into nice hierarchies – for example, interns group might consist of users from various orgs in a company (not just from finance group). In such cases, the only choice is to setup Ranger policies with individual users (and not groups). >> My proposal is to just keep the policy to have only allow and deny with NO >> exceptions. In your use case, if we allow "finance" group and deny "intern" >> group, then anyone in intern group would not be allowed while everyone else >> in finance group will get access. If there is a person in intern group who >> needs access, then user need to be taken out of the intern group or we need >> to add only the users who specifically need to be denied. Users who are not comfortable with the idea of “excludes” can continue to use only allow and deny in the policies. Users who are comfortable with “excludes” can choose to use it to simplify their policy management. Thanks, Madhan From: Balaji Ganesan Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 10:24 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Policy model enhancement to support deny-conditions and exceptions <<Are you suggesting that the security admins create policies that list individual users, instead of using groups? Wouldn’t that make security administration more painful, in a reasonably large organization? For every change in users role (or group) or an employee joining/leaving the org, all security policies have to be reviewed and updated.. Many ACLs support both users and groups to alleviate this issue.>> For argument sakes, finance could be the higher level group and intern could be a sub group in a hierarchy. There could be n number of sub groups. We could provide access by adding n-1 groups to the policy. We can argue whether n<10 or n>50, depending on the answer it would make sense to add all groups which needs access or specify deny groups which don't need access My proposal is to just keep the policy to have only allow and deny with NO exceptions. In your use case, if we allow "finance" group and deny "intern" group, then anyone in intern group would not be allowed while everyone else in finance group will get access. If there is a person in intern group who needs access, then user need to be taken out of the intern group or we need to add only the users who specifically need to be denied. On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 9:48 PM, Madhan Neethiraj <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Balaji, >> why cannot user clearly specific users or groups that would need specific >> access. Why is there a need to give access to finance group as a whole when >> we know there is a subset of user who do not need access to the the finance >> database? or clearly specify users who need to be denied? Are you suggesting that the security admins create policies that list individual users, instead of using groups? Wouldn’t that make security administration more painful, in a reasonably large organization? For every change in users role (or group) or an employee joining/leaving the org, all security policies have to be reviewed and updated.. Many ACLs support both users and groups to alleviate this issue. From: Balaji Ganesan Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 at 9:01 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Policy model enhancement to support deny-conditions and exceptions Madhan, Fantastic job in putting together in the wiki. Thank you. We clearly need to show case use cases for deny exclude and allow exclude. In my opinion it is very confusing to user to construct such a policy <<Let’s say one of the users, scott who is in interns and finance groups, works on an assignment that requires select access to finance database. To enable this access, the authorization policy for the database should be updated by adding a deny-exclude, as shown below:>> In the wiki, we have created a "deny" policy for intern group and an exception for Scott. First of all, why cannot user clearly specific users or groups that would need specific access. Why is there a need to give access to finance group as a whole when we know there is a subset of user who do not need access to the the finance database? or clearly specify users who need to be denied? It is confusing to think about exceptions for deny, deny, exceptions for allow and allow. On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Madhan Neethiraj <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Bosco, Thanks for the review and comments. The wiki<https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/RANGER/Deny-conditions+and+excludes+in+Ranger+policies> has been updated to address your comments. Please review. Thanks, Madhan From: Don Bosco Durai Reply-To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 at 6:20 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Policy model enhancement to support deny-conditions and exceptions Madhan, thanks for putting this document together. It is looking good. Can I make a few suggestions: 1. Call out each use case as separate section. E.g. 2.2.3 for "HDFS policy that allows all finance group users to access contents of /finance folder, but denies access to users in interns group. Users in interns group will be denied the access even if they are part of finance group.” 2. Can we also add a simple use case of global “Deny”. E.g Deny all users from “interns” group from accessing table “Employees" 3. The label “Exceptions”, can we make it more explicit. E.g. “Exclude from Allow Conditions” and “Exclude from Deny Conditions” 4. Probably one small paragraph to explain “Exceptions” will be good. I think, this is sort of a new concept. 5. Section 3 “Policy Evaluation”, it seems to be a flow chart. Can we create flow chart diagram. It will be easy to understand Thanks again. Let me know if you need help in the documentation. Bosco From: Madhan Neethiraj Reply-To: <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Monday, October 12, 2015 at 5:46 PM To: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" Subject: [DISCUSS] Policy model enhancement to support deny-conditions and exceptions All, Apache Ranger policy model enhancement to support deny-conditions and exceptions (RANGER-606<https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/RANGER-606>) is available in tag-policy branch<https://github.com/apache/incubator-ranger/tree/tag-policy>. This enhancement adds the capability to explicitly deny access to resources based on users/groups, access-types and custom-conditions. It also supports allow/deny to be specified for a wider group (like employees, public, etc) but exclude specific users/groups who might be part of the wider groups. An overview of the implementation, along with few examples is available in Apache wiki page here<https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/RANGER/Deny-conditions+and+exceptions+in+Ranger+policies>. Please review. Thanks, Madhan
